Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Faux News Whips Up Hysteria - Shameless Exploitation of Latest Iraq Deaths

Caught a bit of the live coverage of wounded US soldiers arriving in Germany after the mess tent attack. Watched CNN, and sampled some of the Fox News "coverage."

While CNN focused on the attack, the injuries, and the activities of the medical staff; Faux News cheerleaders blathered on about how to carry out attacks on the city of Mosul. They continually presented Fallujah as a model, without a hint of irony that the Fallujah "cleanup" was the catalyst for the current Mosul attacks.

It was also apparent that Roger Ailes' marching orders for today is to pin the attack on Syria. The brainless newsreader in the studio kept asking each guest or reporter he talked to if Syria was behind the attacks and how soon the U.S. would retaliate. Incredulous responses such as "uh, Syrian mortar attacks were suppressed months ago" did nothing to stop the repeated, inane questioning.

And another blowhard retired general demanded an immediate Mosul operation, admitting it would not stop the attacks. However, his theory is each operation (again, presenting Fallujah as some kind of "success" story) weakens the insurgency and this is a war of attrition.

Pure idiocy. The problem with the war we now find ourselves in, after utterly and completely botching the first year, is there is no way to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Imagine a house-to-house operation where our soldiers must forcibly enter every home and determine if the occupants are insurgents. How successful do you suppose they will be?

Let's say Rumsfeld decided to conduct such an operation in my neighborhood, and my neighbor was a white Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. As a terrorist, I would imagine he would remove all evidence of his true intentions from his home (think about the 9/11 hijackers acting like frat boys at a strip club before the operation.)

When Rummy's troops enter his home, they find nothing suspicious. When they enter my home, they would fine an anti-Bush attitude, this Blog; who do you think they will take in?

In reality, my guess is the troops will imprison by profile; any 16-35 year old Sunni male will be caught in the sweep by default.

Given the only way to win an occupation is to convince residents they will be better off by working within the system, how do you suppose such a sweep of Mosul will improve the situation?

Yahoo! News - U.S. Sweeps Through Mosul After Attack

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